Author: Amye Kenall, Associate Publisher, BioMed Central *For internal use only Open Data

Research data: from journal policy to practice “[O]pen access to raw data will go the same way as to published papers…It would not As part of a SpringerNature-wide project, we aim to provide consistent data policies and services to every journal. be a surprise if, in a decade’s time, funders finally get tired of paying for data that researchers keep to themselves…we should fully expect funders to demand that grantees share data” Why? yy At least 28 research funders globally have policies or mandates Andrew J Vickers, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center yy Improving author service by standardizing research www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d2323 (2011) that require data archiving as a condition of grants, including: data policies and procedures and increasing the yy National Foundation (NSF) visibility and connectivity of their articles and data yy National Institutes of Health (NIH) yy Improving editor and peer reviewer service with What do we plan to provide and when? yy Wellcome Trust better guidelines and support for data policies, and visibility of data in the peer-review process yy A research data policy for every relevant publication (journals, books, proceedings) yy Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation yy Improving reader service with more consistent yy Begin by developing 4 standardized data policies yy Sharing data is good for research—and researchers and useful links to data yy First groups of journals to introduce standard policy in Q2 2016 yy Helping authors and journals to comply with funder mandates and yy Supporting editorial goals to publish more yy Editor and author support to enable policy compliance Q2 2016 research community best practices for sharing of research data open and reproducible research yy Increased and more consistent links between research data and publications yy Improved data repository relationships and data citation support Q3 – 4 2016 onwards Overview of data policy types and features How will this affect your journal at BioMed Central? Feature Explanation Type 1 Type 2 Type 3 Type 4 yy For all BioMedical journals we are requesting that journals choose between Type 3 or Type 4 (see table). Data sharing via repositories encouraged Referred to in journal guide to authors Examples: yy Type 3 will encourage that authors deposit their data in a publicly available repository and     Type 1 mandate that authors do so where there is a community-established norm for doing so, yy A large proportion of Data citation permitted Journal style guide permits authors to cite publicly such as with DNA sequencing data. Springer Research Group available datasets in reference lists     and Palgrave journals

Publisher helpdesk Authors and editors can contact with queries about Type 2 data deposition/data policy     yy What can BioMed Central editors expect next Public data deposition and dataset Data deposition checked as part of the publishing _ yy SpringerPlus identifier checks for specific types of data process where there is an established research    Type 3 on data policies? community mandate yy Palgrave Communications Data availability statements Statement in published articles explaining how _ yy Requests for feedback supporting data can be accessed    yy BMC Journals yy Detailed implementation guidance for proposed data policy types yy Public data deposition and dataset Open/publicly available data for all submissions yy Outreach, education and training – for editors and authors _ _ yy journals identifier required and verified and subject areas required (with exceptions for   yy Information on using the helpdesk sensitive/personal data) yy IMF Economic Review Data citations required Relevant dataset citations in reference lists provided _ _ yy Materials to share with authors and verified   Type 4 yy Opportunities for collaboration and identifying new features relating to data policies and services yy GigaScience of data Peer reviewer guidelines and process give guidance yy You tell us! _ _ yy Genome Biology on accessing and reviewing data   yy BMC Biology

Integrated data repository Submission system/review process integrated y Scientific Data _ _ y For more information: please speak to Amye Kenall ([email protected]) with a journal-specific or general repository,   such as figshare or explore our Data Policy and Services Project FAQs.  = Optional/encouraged; service and guidance available to authors but they are not obliged to use it  = Policy or service must be used by the editor or authors and, where applicable, checks are in place to ensure this happens (springernature.com/gp/group/data-policy/faq)

biomedcentral.com

A28454